her
light on all the objects around; anon, driving over her again, with
increased velocity, and shrouding everything in darkness. "Really, this
won't do," said my uncle, addressing himself to the weather, as if he
felt himself personally offended. "This is not at all the kind of
thing for my voyage. It will not do at any price," said my uncle, very
impressively. Having repeated this, several times, he recovered his
balance with some difficulty--for he was rather giddy with looking up
into the sky so long--and walked merrily on.

'The bailie's house was in the Canongate, and my uncle was going to the
other end of Leith Walk, rather better than a mile's journey. On either
side of him, there shot up against the dark sky, tall, gaunt, straggling
houses, with time-stained fronts, and windows that seemed to have shared
the lot of eyes in mortals, and to have grown dim and sunken with
age. Six, seven, eight Storey high, were the houses; storey piled upon
storey, as children build with cards--throwing their dark shadows over
the roughly paved road, and making the dark night darker. A few oil
lamps were scattered at long distances, but they only served to mark
the dirty entrance to some narrow close, or to show where a common stair
communicated, by steep and intricate windings, with the various flats
above. Glancing at all these things with the air of a man who had seen
them too often before, to think them worthy of much notice now, my
uncle walked up the middle of the street, with a thumb in each waistcoat
pocket, indulging from time to time in various snatches of song, chanted
forth with such good-will and spirit, that the quiet honest folk started
from their first sleep and lay trembling in bed till the sound died
away in the distance; when, satisfying themselves that it was only some
drunken ne'er-do-weel finding his way home, they covered themselves up
warm and fell asleep again.

'I am particular in describing how my uncle walked up the middle of the
street, with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, gentlemen, because, as
he often used to say (and with great reason too) there is nothing at
all extraordinary in this story, unless you distinctly understand at
the beginning, that he was not by any means of a marvellous or romantic
turn.

'Gentlemen, my uncle walked on with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets,
taking the middle of the street to himself, and singing, now a verse of
a love song, and then a verse of a drinking